Retention obligations in Austria: 7 years and digital filing

In Austria, books, records, receipts and business papers must generally be retained for seven years – this follows from § 212 of the Unternehmensgesetzbuch (UGB, the Austrian Commercial Code) and § 132 of the Bundesabgabenordnung (BAO, the Federal Fiscal Code). The period begins at the end of the calendar year to which the documents relate. Electronic retention is permitted if a complete, orderly, content-identical reproduction that is true to the original is guaranteed for the entire period – so digital filing can largely replace paper filing.

In brief

• Basic rule: seven years’ retention for books, receipts, invoices and business papers under the UGB and BAO.
• Documents that must be retained for longer include those relating to real property and documents relevant to pending proceedings.
• The period runs from the end of the calendar year – not from the date of the record.
• Scanning and then destroying the paper is permitted under certain conditions; individual originals should nevertheless be kept.
• The retention obligation and the GDPR obligation to erase do not contradict each other: first the period runs, then erasure applies.

What does the 7-year basic rule under the UGB and BAO say?

Two laws form the foundation of retention obligations. The Unternehmensgesetzbuch (UGB) – the central law for entrepreneurs in Austria – requires in § 212 that books, inventories, annual financial statements together with the management report, business letters received, copies of business letters sent and accounting records be retained for seven years. The Bundesabgabenordnung (BAO) – the procedural law for taxes and levies – likewise requires in § 132, for tax purposes, that books, records and the related receipts be retained for seven years.

In practice, this means: almost everything that documents business transactions is covered by the obligation – incoming and outgoing invoices, bank statements, contracts that serve as records, delivery notes, cash records and business emails, insofar as they serve as records. In addition, the BAO requires documents to be retained beyond the seven years for as long as they are relevant to pending tax proceedings or to court or administrative proceedings. The legal texts are freely available in the Austrian federal legal information system RIS (ris.bka.gv.at).

Which periods apply to which documents?

The following table summarises the established standard cases:

Document type	Retention period
Books, records, annual financial statements	7 years
Incoming and outgoing invoices	7 years
Accounting records (till receipts, bank statements, delivery notes serving as records)	7 years
Business letters received and sent (including emails that serve as records)	7 years
Documents relating to real property (relevant for VAT)	Considerably longer – usually 22 years
Documents for pending tax, court or administrative proceedings	Until the proceedings are concluded, even beyond 7 years

Two notes to put this in context: first, depending on the industry and the circumstances, there are further special periods (for example under labour law or social security law); the table covers the general standard cases under company and tax law. Second, it is advisable to keep contracts and documents with evidential value – for example relating to warranty or possible legal disputes – for as long as claims could be asserted under them, regardless of statutory periods. The Austrian Economic Chamber, WKO (wko.at), provides up-to-date overviews for practical use.

When does the period start?

The period does not begin with the date of the record, but with the end of the calendar year for which the entry was made or to which the record relates. An example: an invoice dated 15 January and an invoice dated 20 December of the same year have the same end of period – seven years after 31 December of that year. If the financial year differs from the calendar year, the period runs from the end of the calendar year in which the financial year ends.

In practice, this means: at the end of each year, a complete year’s worth of records can be checked for destruction or deletion – provided none of the extensions (ongoing proceedings, documents relating to real property, other special periods) applies. This check is exactly where unstructured filing becomes expensive: if you don’t know which documents belong to which year, you can neither destroy them safely nor produce them quickly in the event of an audit.

Is it permitted to scan and destroy the paper?

In principle, yes – subject to conditions. Both the UGB and the BAO allow retention on data carriers. The BAO makes this conditional on a complete, orderly, content-identical reproduction that is true to the original being guaranteed at all times until the end of the retention period. Specifically, this means:

• Complete: all pages, including reverse sides with content, are captured; no record is missing.
• Orderly: the documents are filed systematically and can be found without unreasonable effort – an unorganised scan folder is not enough.
• Identical in content and true to the original: the reproduction corresponds to the original both visually and in content; subsequent changes must be ruled out or recognisable.
• Available for the entire period: it must be possible to make the files readable throughout the entire period – this includes data backup and the choice of durable formats.

If these conditions are met, the UGB and BAO permit retention on data carriers; whether paper originals can be destroyed in your own case should be clarified with your tax adviser before any destruction. However, caution is needed with documents whose original has a legal significance of its own – for example notarially certified deeds, certain powers of attorney or documents with an original signature that could serve as evidence. Such items should additionally be kept in the original. If in doubt, consult your tax adviser before any large-scale destruction; this article provides general guidance and is no substitute for legal or tax advice in an individual case.

How does digital filing make the periods manageable?

The retention obligation is less a storage problem than an organisational one. Digital filing plays to its strengths precisely where paper reaches its limits:

1. Periods under control per year: if documents are consistently filed with year and document type, a complete year can be checked and released in a targeted way at the end of each year.
2. Findability in the event of an audit: in an audit by the tax authorities, documents must be produced within a reasonable time. A searchable filing system answers questions such as ‘all incoming invoices from one supplier from a particular year’ quickly, instead of in cardboard boxes.
3. Protection against loss: paper can be lost through water, fire or simply moving premises – with unpleasant consequences, up to and including the tax base being estimated. With digital filing, automatic data backup is part of the system.
4. Regulated access: user and role management ensures that, for example, personnel records are only accessible to authorised persons – a point that is also relevant under data protection law.

Modern systems go one step further: in an AI knowledge base, you can ask questions about your own document collection in natural language – with answers including the source from the filed records, on EU servers and with a data processing agreement (DPA). Legally compliant filing and fast access therefore do not exclude each other; they depend on each other.

Retention obligation or GDPR obligation to erase – which applies when?

At first glance, two obligations seem to contradict each other: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires personal data to be erased when it is no longer needed – the retention obligations require it to be kept for years. Legally, the contradiction resolves cleanly: fulfilling a statutory obligation is a recognised basis for continued storage. As long as the retention period is running, a record containing personal data may and must be retained; if a data subject requests erasure, an ongoing statutory retention obligation can stand in the way of the erasure.

Once the period has expired, the picture reverses: if there is no other legitimate reason for storage, personal data must be erased. Good filing practice therefore combines both – management of periods for retention and a defined erasure process for afterwards. If you document both, you can answer to both the tax office and the Austrian Data Protection Authority (dsb.gv.at) at any time. How data protection works in detail when AI is used on your own document collection – from roles and data processing agreements to data subject rights – is covered in the overview article AI and the GDPR in Austria.